In arranging your patter, be humorous if you can, but if, like the gentleman we have all heard of, you “joke with difficulty,” don’t force yourself to be funny. That it is possible for a man lacking humour still to be a great conjurer is proved by the case of Hartz, who was notably deficient in this particular, but by his excellence in other directions won a place in the very first rank of his profession. But if you cannot be humorous, at any rate be cheerful. Geniality of manner is one of the most valuable assets of the conjurer. Above all, don’t be nervous. You may say “I can’t help it,” but to a great extent you can. It is largely a matter of will. Start with the idea that all will go well, and it will probably do so. On the other hand, a low-spirited conjurer always makes a low-spirited audience.
In any case, be sparing of puns, which have been deservedly described as the lowest form of wit. A single pun, if good enough (or bad enough) may win a laugh, and score to your credit, but to pepper an audience with verbal shrapnel in the shape of puns is an outrage on good taste.
Passing to the third function of patter, the misdirection of attention in the course of a trick, we will assume that you have made a start in the right direction at the outset, by suggesting some fanciful explanation of the effect you intend to produce, so that your audience, starting from wrong premises, do not know the points at which their too close observation would be inconvenient. The best way of diverting their attention at one of these critical points is obviously to attract it to some other direction. A mere sentence, particularly if accompanied by appropriate action, will suffice. Supposing, to take an elementary instance, that the performer desires to drop unseen into the profonde from his left hand some small article for which he has just deftly substituted a duplicate, now exhibited in the right hand, he has only to say, “Now I want you particularly to keep an eye on this”—whatever the article in the right hand may happen to be. All eyes are for the moment, instinctively drawn to the object in question, and in that moment the deed is done. The artifice is ridiculously simple, but it is effective, and it is on being fully prepared with the right thing to say and do at the critical moment that the success of a magical entertainment largely depends. Careful rehearsal, preferably before an expert friend, will furnish the best hints as to the danger-spots in the working of a trick, and how best to devise patter to meet them.
A final word of advice—advice that has been often given, but cannot be too often repeated if you really aim to carry your audience with you. Never lose sight of the fact that you are, in the words of Robert-Houdin, “an actor playing the part of a magician,” and take your office seriously. In particular, never before an audience use the word “trick,” which at once gives away all your pretension to magical power. An actor never tells his audience that he is an actor or that he is playing a part. He does not call their attention to his make-up, however excellent, or tell them that his wig comes from Clarkson. On the contrary, he does his best to make his audience for the time forget that he is Hubert de Barnstormer, or whatever his stage name may be, and to keep up the illusion that he is actually the person whom he represents. The modern magician should do the same. If he has enough of the true artistic spirit to imagine, when he steps forward on the platform, that he is a magician, and that his miracles are genuine, he will go a long way towards producing a like impression in the minds of his audience. Bearing this in mind, describe what you propose to do as an “effect,” a “marvel,” an “experiment,” or a “phenomenon”; never by any chance as a “trick.”
It may be objected that I have myself repeatedly used the obnoxious word in the course of the foregoing pages, but that is another matter. This book is written by a conjurer for conjurers: and as between ourselves we are forced to admit, painful though it be to do so, that our greatest miracles are only tricks. But we need not tell the public so. Logically-minded, persons know it well enough, if they are allowed to think about the matter. Our business is to make them, for the time, forget it. A wise old Roman said: Populus vult decipi: decipiatur. Your audience wish to be deceived; in fact they have come together for that purpose. By all means let them be deceived to the top of their bent; and the first step towards effectually deceiving them, is to persuade them, if possible, that there is “no deception.”
The patter for a given trick, once composed, and tested by a few performances in public, may thenceforth, so far as the professional is concerned, be left to take care of itself. It should automatically improve with each of its earlier repetitions as good wine improves in bottle. Faults will correct themselves, and being made perfect by practice, the performer will thenceforth be able to “speak his piece” without effort, and devote his whole energies to the actual working of the trick.
To the amateur, only performing on special occasions, with perhaps considerable intervals between them, I commend a plan from which I myself derived great benefit, viz.: Write out from memory the patter for each trick on the programme a day or two before a coming performance. After you have given your show, go through your manuscript again carefully, noting and correcting it in any point in which the patter failed to be exactly right. The interpolation of a single sentence, the transposition in point of sequence of two movements, or the alteration of some trifling detail, such as standing at a different angle to your table at a given moment, may make all the difference between partial failure and complete success.